that exercises the most influence for evil.

Benedict Arnold was the only general in the Revolution that disgraced
his country. He had great military talent, wonderful energy, and a
courage equal to any emergency. But Arnold _did not start right_.
Even when a boy he was despised for his cruelty and his selfishness.
He delighted in torturing insects and birds that he might watch their
sufferings. He scattered pieces of glass and sharp tacks on the floor
of the shop he was tending, to cut the feet of the barefooted boys.
Even in the army, in spite of his bravery, the soldiers hated him, and
the officers dared not trust him.

Let no man trust the first false step
Of guilt; it hangs upon a precipice,
Whose steep descent in last perdition ends.
YOUNG

Years ago there was a district lying near Westminster Abbey, London,
called the "Devil's Acre,"--a school for vicious habits, where
depravity was universal; where professional beggars were fitted with
all the appliances of imposture; where there was an agency for the hire
of children to be carried about by forlorn widows and deserted wives,
to move the compassion of street-giving benevolence; where young
pickpockets were trained in the art and mystery which was to conduct
them in due course to an expensive voyage for the good of their country
to Botany Bay.

Victor Hugo describes a strange association of men in the seventeenth
century who bought children and distorted and made monstrosities of
them to amuse the nobility with; and in cultured Boston there is an
association of so-called "respectable men," who have opened thousands
of "places of business" for deforming men, women, and children's souls.
But we deform ourselves with agencies so pleasant that we think we are
having a good time, until we become so changed and enslaved that we
scarcely recognize ourselves. Vice, the pleasant guest which we first
invited into our heart's parlor, becomes vulgarly familiar, and
intrenches herself deep in our very being. We ask her to leave, but
she simply laughs at us from the hideous wrinkles she has made in our
faces, and refuses to go. Our secret sins defy us from the hideous
furrows they have cut in our cheeks. Each impure thought has chiseled
its autograph deep into the forehead, too deep for erasure, and the
glassy, bleary eye adds its testimony to our ruined character.

The devil does not apply his match to the hard coal; but he first
lights the shavi